Bato awards ARMM cop with medal for honesty

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines — Police Director-General Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa on Thursday awarded with a medal a rookie policeman who returned thousands worth of cash he found in Cotabato City last month.

Dela Rosa said PO1 Jose Angelo Zorilla of the Regional Public Safety Battalion in the Police Regional Office-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao deserved the Medalya ng Papuri for an act of honesty.

Dela Rosa was speaker in Thursday’s commemoration by the personnel of PRO-ARMM of the 116th anniversary of the Philippine police service in Camp SK Pendatun in Parang town in the first district of Maguindanao.

Zorilla received the Medalya ng Papuri in the presence of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, Parang Mayor Ibrahim Ibay and Chief Superintendent Reuben Theodore Sindac, director of PRO-ARMM.

The event, where Dela Rosa was guest of honor, was capped off with the grant of merit awards to more than a dozen police officers, among them Zorilla, who is assigned in the troubled Marawi City.

Zorilla, son of a retired Army soldier, was on three-day break in Cotabato City in early August to visit his family when his dedication as a police officer was put to a test.

He was to withdraw an amount from a branch of the Land Bank of the Philippines in Cotabato City when he found paper bills amounting to P20,000 stuck in the cash release window of an automated teller machine. 

Zorilla immediately returned the amount to the manager of the bank and alerted its owner via a leading broadcast outfit in Cotabato City, the Catholic station dxMS of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate congregation. 

In a message, Dela Rosa praised the personnel of the ARMM police for their determination to address the peculiar security issues besetting the autonomous region.

The ARMM covers the provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, both in mainland Mindanao, and the islands of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, common bastions of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front.

The region is also saddled with threats from local jihadist groups operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Dela Rosa said the Philippine National Police is honored with the dedication of ARMM police personnel involved in the restoration of normalcy in Marawi City.

Marawi City, capital of Lanao del Sur, is locked in a raging strife instigated more than three months ago by the ISIS-inspired Maute terror group.

The conflict there has displaced more than 300,000 Maranao residents.

“I am proud of the dedication of our personnel serving in Marawi City. I am grateful to them for their sacrifices there,” Dela Rosa said.

He cautioned PRO-ARMM’s rank-and-file troops to be prepared for possible legal issues that may confront them in performing their law enforcement activities.

“Just keep on. Continue working hard in ensuring public safety,” Dela Rosa pointed out in his speech, punctuated with jokes in Cebuano dialect.

Dela Rosa also lauded Sindac, who is to retire from the service before yearend, for leading the PNP’s effort to sustain President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on illegal drugs and counter-terrorism efforts in the autonomous region.